Our first stop on our one full day in Belfast was a trip to the Titanic Museum. The Titanic was built in and launched out of Belfast, made a few stops in England, France, and Ireland, and then, well, you know the rest.
This trip was Bridget's idea. I've always been uncomfortable with this kind of thing because it feels like exploiting tragedy, but this tour was excellent. Educational, entertaining, and tastefully mourning and memorializing the dead. It did not really lend itself to a lot of photography, though I do with I had taken a good shot of the replica of the boat. Instead all I got was this shot of the hillside on the other side of the harbor.
Our next stop was the Old Bushmills Distillery in Bushmills, County Antrim, where they have been producing fine Irish whiskey since 1743. As we waited in the lobby for our tour, I checked out brochures for other activities in the area. This spot, called the Ice Bowl, offered ice skating, tenpin bowling, and ... wait ... INDIANA LAND?! Fifty states to choose from to attract visitors and you choose INDIANA?!
So the idea is that you can run and have adventures like Indiana Jones, which ... OK, but do George Lucas' lawyers know about this?
Oh, and when you're done experiencing all that Indiana Land has to offer, you can visit the Alaska Cafe. Because no state is more closely linked to juicy ground beef than Alaska.
At last we started our tour, which included copper vats, pipes, conveyor belts, and casks. Hundred and hundreds of beautiful casks.
And of course we went through the gift shop, where you can buy a Bushmills Irish whiskey Christmas bauble. Not an ornament. A BAUBLE. Which is obviously cooler.
And just outside the gift shop: a portrait of F.X. McRory's whiskey bar in Pioneer Square, Seattle, Washington, USA.
And here is Bridget repping the Thunderbirds outside the distillery.
From there it was a quick drive to the Giant's Causeway, a group of 40,000 or so basalt columns descending into the sea like stairsteps, then climbing out of the waves on the opposite shore in Scotland. Legend says that Irish giant Finn MacCool built the causeway because he wanted to fight Scottish giant Benandonner. Science says that following a volcanic eruption 50 million years ago, lava flowed into the ocean and quickly cooled, separating into columns that rose and fell throughout the millennia. Either explanation is pretty cool, when you think about it.
There is a ridge of columns near the shore that is easy to climb. Bridget went first.
And then I went up there.
Here's what I saw at the top.
Then I had to get down. It was hard to look cool doing this, but I pulled it off.
Or not.
Anyway. The Causeway.
Yes, it was as cool as it looks. As was the surrounding scenery.
We returned to Belfast. It had been a very long day, at the end of a long, wonderful trip. After dinner (thanks to Matt Cleary!), we returned to our hotel to rest. Then we realized we had one more night in Ireland, and there was one thing left to do: a night of traditional Irish music, surrounded by traditional Irish beer and traditional Irish drunkards.
We asked in the lobby about the best spot for that on a Thursday night. The guy at the desk said he knew just the place. And he sent us on a journey, in the middle of the night, in a foreign land, across streets and down dark alleys, past abandoned buildings and vacant lots. It was not a comfortable trip.
But we found our destination: Fibber Magees Traditional Irish Music Bar. And it was grand. A small, packed, sweaty room with ample amounts of Guinness, and a quartet calling themselves Parcel of Rogues playing classic old school Irish drinking songs.
I got to sing "Wild Rover" at the top of my lungs with a bunch of other drunks singing at the top of their lungs, as the boys played along on guitar and tin whistle and bodhran (that hand-held drum thingie). In fact, I just found this video shot the prior January, shooting the exact same band in the exact same bar from almost the exact same spot I was standing, so you can imagine what it was like for yourself. They played other Irish classics too, like "Dirty Old Town" and "Ride On" and (as seen here) "Sweet Child o' Mine." It was so, so grand.
And then it was back past the vacant lots and abandoned buildings, down dark alleys and across streets, in the middle of the night in a foreign land. It was only slightly more comfortable the second time.
That was our last night in Ireland. We were worn out and quite ready for home. But we had one more major stop before hitting the airport the next day.
